Casanova.

PARIS OPERA BALLET PALAIS GARNIER, PARIS MARCH 3-18, 1998 REVIEWED BY KARYN BAUER

Casanova is designed to unsettle. During this, Angelin Preljocaj's second work for the Paris Opera Ballet, the spectator's senses are awakened not to the gallantry and debauchery of the legendary seducer's eighteenth-century stamping grounds, but to the tragedy of the sexually transmitted diseases which haunted him then, and us now.

Gigantic pelvic X rays hover ominously over the stage. Their lurking presence is amplified by Goran Vejvoda's taped musical score, which fuses the blips and beeps of hospital machinery such as electrocardiograms and scanners with Bach, warbled speech, dripping water, revving engines, and other sounds.

The ballet opens with etoiles Nicolas Le Riche, Nathalie Rique, Aurelie Dupont, Laurent Hilaire, Isabelle Guerin, and Wilfried Romoli dispersed on two leather couches, each calmly playing with a Ping-Pong ball. It's the calm before the storm, however. The dancers brilliantly execute a long series of delicately sensual movements which come to an abrupt close when Guerin approaches a microphone and delivers a disturbing speech about chlamydia, gonorrhea, and various other manifestations of sexual illness.

Guerin brings to life an otherwise tormentedly morbid text with a spirited delivery, closing with a cheerful bonne soiree! ("enjoy yourselves!"). After she drifts offstage, drowned out by Vejvoda's charged sound track, her colleagues engage in an orgasmic menage a cinq, bringing an end to the first tableau.

Much of the ballet's color comes from the decor and the costumes, which are designed to accentuate the raw nature of the subject matter. Doctors dressed in light green scrubs chase after nurses in white miniskirts; blue-suited businessmen wear elk heads while carrying briefcases full of Ping-Pong balls; female dancers wear bodysuits depicting a skinned human body, and dance in sleek white shirts with pink phalluses attached to their black slips.

The final trio, composed of Le Riche, Hilaire, and Romoli, is powerful not only in its diversity (Le Riche climbing a red volcanic wall while Hilaire and Romoli perform an emotionally charged pas de deux) but also in its message Hilaire, on wobbly and weak legs, pushes himself to dance despite his diminishing strength. Even when his legs can no longer carry him, he fights passionately, crying all the while, Willy, danse avec moi! ("Willy, dance with me!"). While no one dancer portrays the role of Casanova, his legendary spirit winds its way through the piece in this introspective look at a world he could have inhabited.

A wild and jubilantly young crowd cheered the final performances of Casanova with an enthusiasm that quelled the whistles that had ripped through the air on opening night, bringing the latest Preljocaj creation to a dramatic close.